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View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoMark Humphrey | Associated PressA survey of the Army’s nearly 170,000 women showed that less than 8 percent of the 30,000 who responded said they wanted a combat job. Of those, an overwhelming number said they would like to be a Night Stalker — a member of elite special-operations helicopter crews.

FORT EUSTIS, Va. — Only a small fraction of Army women say they would like to move into one of the newly opening combat jobs, but of those few who do, most want a job that takes them into the heart of battle, according to preliminary results from a survey of the service’s nearly 170,000 women.

That survey and others across the Army, publicly disclosed for the first time to the Associated Press, also revealed that soldiers of both genders are nervous about women entering combat jobs but say they are determined to do it fairly.

Men are worried about losing their jobs to women; women are worried that they will be seen as getting jobs because of their gender rather than their qualifications. Both are emphatic that the Army must not lower standards to accommodate women.

Less than 8 percent of Army women who responded to the survey said they want a combat job. Of those, an overwhelming number said they would like to be a Night Stalker — a member of the elite special-operations helicopter crews who perhaps are best known for flying the Navy SEALs into Osama bin Laden’s compound in 2011.

Last year, top Pentagon officials signed an order saying that women must have the same opportunities as men in combat jobs, and the services have been devising updated physical standards, training, education and other programs for thousands of jobs they must open on Jan. 1, 2016. The services must open as many jobs to women as possible; if they decide to keep some closed, they must explain why.

The Army said that about 200,000 of its 1.1 million jobs are either direct combat or related jobs, such as field artillery and combat engineers. That’s roughly 20 percent of the force, although the direct-combat front-line fighters make up nearly half of that — 9 percent.

Throughout last year, the Army emailed questionnaires to active-duty soldiers, reservists and Army National Guard members to gauge their views on the move to bring women into combat jobs. The results from the survey sent to women showed that just 2,238 — or

7.5 percent — of the 30,000 who responded said they would want one of the infantry, armor, artillery or combat-engineer jobs.

Army officials also polled men and women on their concerns about the integration. And they asked senior female leaders to say whether they would have chosen combat jobs if they had been given that chance 10 or 20 years ago.

All agreed that the physical standards for the jobs should remain the same.

“The men don’t want to lower the standards because they see that as a perceived risk to their team,” said David Brinkley, deputy chief of staff for operations at the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command. “The women don’t want to lower the standards because they want the men to know they’re just as able as they are to do the same task.”

The questionnaires, and the focus groups that followed them, showed that younger men and those who have served with women in the past two years are more open to the integration, but midlevel soldiers — particularly those in units such as infantry and armor that have not yet included women — are more hesitant.

Army leaders were unsurprised by the small number of women interested in combat jobs.

“The issue is going to be the propensity of women who want to do some of these things,” said Gen. Ray Odierno, chief of staff of the Army. “I don’t think it’s going to be as great as people think.”

After the Night Stalker jobs, the second-most popular choice was infantry, followed closely by combat engineers. Far fewer said they wanted to be in the field artillery. And the least popular branch of the Army they named was armor — jobs that involve working in the hulking tanks and armored vehicles.

“We’ve got to utilize the talent that we have available,” Odierno said. “We have some incredible female talent that we’ve been ignoring for a long time.”